2 # Block device driver configuration
7 menu "Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)"
10 bool "Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)"
12 Support multiple physical spindles through a single logical device.
13 Required for RAID and logical volume management.
16 tristate "RAID support"
19 This driver lets you combine several hard disk partitions into one
20 logical block device. This can be used to simply append one
21 partition to another one or to combine several redundant hard disks
22 into a RAID1/4/5 device so as to provide protection against hard
23 disk failures. This is called "Software RAID" since the combining of
24 the partitions is done by the kernel. "Hardware RAID" means that the
25 combining is done by a dedicated controller; if you have such a
26 controller, you do not need to say Y here.
28 More information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
29 Software RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
30 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also learn
31 where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
36 tristate "Linear (append) mode"
39 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
40 use the so-called linear mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
41 partitions by simply appending one to the other.
43 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
44 will be called linear.
49 tristate "RAID-0 (striping) mode"
52 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
53 use the so-called raid0 mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
54 partitions into one logical device in such a fashion as to fill them
55 up evenly, one chunk here and one chunk there. This will increase
56 the throughput rate if the partitions reside on distinct disks.
58 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
59 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
60 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
61 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
63 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
69 tristate "RAID-1 (mirroring) mode"
72 A RAID-1 set consists of several disk drives which are exact copies
73 of each other. In the event of a mirror failure, the RAID driver
74 will continue to use the operational mirrors in the set, providing
75 an error free MD (multiple device) to the higher levels of the
76 kernel. In a set with N drives, the available space is the capacity
77 of a single drive, and the set protects against a failure of (N - 1)
80 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
81 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
82 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
83 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
85 If you want to use such a RAID-1 set, say Y. To compile this code
86 as a module, choose M here: the module will be called raid1.
91 tristate "RAID-10 (mirrored striping) mode (EXPERIMENTAL)"
92 depends on BLK_DEV_MD && EXPERIMENTAL
94 RAID-10 provides a combination of striping (RAID-0) and
95 mirroring (RAID-1) with easier configuration and more flexible
97 Unlike RAID-0, but like RAID-1, RAID-10 requires all devices to
98 be the same size (or at least, only as much as the smallest device
100 RAID-10 provides a variety of layouts that provide different levels
101 of redundancy and performance.
103 RAID-10 requires mdadm-1.7.0 or later, available at:
105 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
110 tristate "RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 mode"
111 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
113 A RAID-5 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive provides
114 the capacity of C * (N - 1) MB, and protects against a failure
115 of a single drive. For a given sector (row) number, (N - 1) drives
116 contain data sectors, and one drive contains the parity protection.
117 For a RAID-4 set, the parity blocks are present on a single drive,
118 while a RAID-5 set distributes the parity across the drives in one
119 of the available parity distribution methods.
121 A RAID-6 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive
122 provides the capacity of C * (N - 2) MB, and protects
123 against a failure of any two drives. For a given sector
124 (row) number, (N - 2) drives contain data sectors, and two
125 drives contains two independent redundancy syndromes. Like
126 RAID-5, RAID-6 distributes the syndromes across the drives
127 in one of the available parity distribution methods.
129 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
130 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
131 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
132 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
134 If you want to use such a RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 set, say Y. To
135 compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module
136 will be called raid456.
140 config MD_RAID5_RESHAPE
141 bool "Support adding drives to a raid-5 array (experimental)"
142 depends on MD_RAID456 && EXPERIMENTAL
144 A RAID-5 set can be expanded by adding extra drives. This
145 requires "restriping" the array which means (almost) every
146 block must be written to a different place.
148 This option allows such restriping to be done while the array
149 is online. However it is still EXPERIMENTAL code. It should
150 work, but please be sure that you have backups.
152 You will need mdadm version 2.4.1 or later to use this
153 feature safely. During the early stage of reshape there is
154 a critical section where live data is being over-written. A
155 crash during this time needs extra care for recovery. The
156 newer mdadm takes a copy of the data in the critical section
157 and will restore it, if necessary, after a crash.
159 The mdadm usage is e.g.
160 mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --raid-disks=6
161 to grow '/dev/md1' to having 6 disks.
163 Note: The array can only be expanded, not contracted.
164 There should be enough spares already present to make the new
168 tristate "Multipath I/O support"
169 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
171 Multipath-IO is the ability of certain devices to address the same
172 physical disk over multiple 'IO paths'. The code ensures that such
173 paths can be defined and handled at runtime, and ensures that a
174 transparent failover to the backup path(s) happens if a IO errors
175 arrives on the primary path.
180 tristate "Faulty test module for MD"
181 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
183 The "faulty" module allows for a block device that occasionally returns
184 read or write errors. It is useful for testing.
189 tristate "Device mapper support"
192 Device-mapper is a low level volume manager. It works by allowing
193 people to specify mappings for ranges of logical sectors. Various
194 mapping types are available, in addition people may write their own
195 modules containing custom mappings if they wish.
197 Higher level volume managers such as LVM2 use this driver.
199 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module will be
205 tristate "Crypt target support"
206 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
209 This device-mapper target allows you to create a device that
210 transparently encrypts the data on it. You'll need to activate
211 the ciphers you're going to use in the cryptoapi configuration.
213 Information on how to use dm-crypt can be found on
215 <http://www.saout.de/misc/dm-crypt/>
217 To compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module will
223 tristate "Snapshot target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
224 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
226 Allow volume managers to take writable snapshots of a device.
229 tristate "Mirror target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
230 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
232 Allow volume managers to mirror logical volumes, also
233 needed for live data migration tools such as 'pvmove'.
236 tristate "Zero target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
237 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
239 A target that discards writes, and returns all zeroes for
240 reads. Useful in some recovery situations.
243 tristate "Multipath target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
244 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
246 Allow volume managers to support multipath hardware.
248 config DM_MULTIPATH_EMC
249 tristate "EMC CX/AX multipath support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
250 depends on DM_MULTIPATH && BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
252 Multipath support for EMC CX/AX series hardware.